<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Should've Been Home by Now by StaticPhantom</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27725899">Should've Been Home by Now</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaticPhantom/pseuds/StaticPhantom'>StaticPhantom</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Mourning, Musings on Destroya and the Desert, Nonbinary Missile Kid, Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:27:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27725899</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaticPhantom/pseuds/StaticPhantom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been almost two years, but Mad Gear swears he can see his partner smirking in the distance, when the sun hits just the right spot in the sky.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mad Gear &amp; Missile Kid (Danger Days)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Should've Been Home by Now</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>CW: Death mention</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn’t like he didn’t think they were gone.</p><p> </p><p>He knew better than anyone else that they would never come back, that they were lost to the Witch or Destroya, or whatever came after, but he could feel them sometimes. Not as though they were beside him, but as if they were watching from a dune far away. In the dying light of the day he could see them, hunched over some notebook or another, tapping out a new rhythm on his boots. The silent drumming formed a new rhythm which he would work into something bright and loud—something into which he would pour his heart on a stage where only they existed.</p><p> </p><p>Their presence was watching over him, but not from above with the same wandering eye as the Witch. He could see their silhouette flicker on the horizon as though the Death Disco had never happened. They were still smiling, their teeth crooked and slightly yellow, a wild spark ever present in their eye. The words appeared on the page before him, a ghostly hand wrapped around his own as the lyrics took form.</p><p> </p><p>Mad Gear looked down on the words and felt the aching pit in his stomach knit itself together just a little more. In the weeks after they had gone, there had been nothing. He had allowed everything to build and fester in his head, unable to come to terms with the shock of losing the person he had loved so much. He had shrugged off the touch of anyone else who cared or wished that he would just talk to them. They had understood, how could they not? Every one of them had felt the same loss, that hole opening up in your chest and radiating emptiness throughout every crevice in your body.</p><p> </p><p>He had sat in the house in which they had lived for... He couldn’t remember how long.</p><p> </p><p>It had been over a year now, almost two really. Regret had eaten away months of his life as he sat alone in their old home. Just close enough to the outer zones that the radiation kept anyone with half a braincell out of his pale blue hair for enough time that he could realize the toll this sorrow-fueled isolation had taken. The music had come in full force after the period where bringing pen to paper only forced tears to spill onto the page instead of ink. He had finally been able to write again with a new determination. Words which had hidden in the dam he had created were unleashed, messy and disjointed, into an army of notebooks and scraps of paper marked with painfully familiar drawings.  </p><p> </p><p>He had always known the fragility of life, the ease with which it could be stripped away and turned to nothing. He had seen It firsthand in the Wars, but had never felt its effects quite so sternly. This was a whole new kind of loss, accentuated with the knowledge that someone was still there, still living a life completely and utterly separate to your own. Worlds apart from the one you had lost, yet so close that you could feel them reading every rhyme over your shoulder, hear them laughing at your terrible spelling and inability to efficiently name even a single track.</p><p> </p><p>Kid had never really had that much faith in the Witch, instead dedicating himself to waking the one so revered by those in the lobby. Destroya, rising up from the ashes like a phoenix reborn in their hour of need, ready to lead the Killjoys into a world where they could live as they pleased without fear of extermination.</p><p> </p><p>He had called the noise a ‘cry for help’, a desperate call. The myth rang true in every one of Missile Kid’s lyrics and the pages of discarded lines. The idea that if they were loud enough, if they could cause enough of a ruckus with colours and noises bursting out and spreading across the desert, they could draw the benevolent giant’s attention. With the right words, the right call to his sleeping ears, he would rise up from his intensive slumber. Mad Gear continued in such a fashion, if only to pay homage to the hope which had catapulted their music into the forefront of the rebellion. But he wasn’t calling out to a savior to relieve them from the constriction of this world, he was calling out to his friend, his lover, who had been stolen too soon.</p><p> </p><p>They weren’t really gone, and in those moments on stage—now that he could bear to face a crowd once more—where he could jump around and smile to the fans before him, he could feel them behind him, smashing away at the drum set, his hair wild and messy. He could smell the pungent scent of dripping sweat mixed with motor oil, could see the passion and determination burning hot in their eyes.</p><p> </p><p>Even if every ‘Joy in the Zones hadn’t noticed, Mad Gear knew his performances had changed. The words tore from his throat with a newfound desperation. Every show overwhelmed him with the burning need to tell them that their words still sparked joy and madness in the Zones’ inhabitants, that each chord and lyric existed because of them. That if they couldn’t be on stage with him, he would give them one hell of a show in the world to which they were confined.</p><p> </p><p>He smiled and looked up from the paper on which he had been writing.</p><p> </p><p>A glint in the sky not unlike the one so present in the Missile Kid’s piercing eyes twinkled above him.</p><p> </p><p>They had been right. The stars were returning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope you enjoyed this short fic, feel free to comment or find me at @static-phantom on tumblr</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>